Dr. Nikola P. Prokopovich (1918-1999) was born in Kiev, Ukraine and came
to the United States in 1950. He made his home in Sacramento, where he
worked as a geologist with the Bureau of Reclamation's Mid-Pacific Region.
Dr. Prokopovich worked out of the Sacramento office from 1958-1986,
investigating the geology and geochemistry of California statewide water
projects, including the Central Valley Project and the Solano Project.
Because of the wide-ranging impact of the Central Valley Project, the
Prokopovich papers will be of interest to a number of disciplines: geology;
environmental science and policy; water science; soil science; and history,
especially history of agriculture.

Prokopovich was an avid field geologist and spent as much time as possible
on-site, collecting his own data. He was particularly interested in the
engineering geology of the Central Valley Project's canals and dam sites
and in the effects of both the state water projects and field irrigation
on the surrounding landscape. The collection includes draft reports,
memoranda, and published writings, as well as nearly 25,000 slides and
photographs documenting his work and the land around his work sites.

Sample pages from Prokopovich’s notebooks

Sample pages from Prokopovich’s notebooks

Sacramento Valley from the air

The Central Valley Project

The Central Valley Project (CVP) is a Bureau of Reclamation federal water project
designed to provide irrigation and municipal water to California's Central Valley.
Reservoirs in the northern half of the state regulate and store water and a series
of canals, aqueducts, and pump plants transport it to the San Joaquin Valley and
its surroundings.

Subsidence

Land subsidence occurs when large amounts of ground water have been withdrawn
from certain types of rocks, such as fine-grained sediments. The rock compacts
because the water is partly responsible for holding the ground up. When the
water is withdrawn, the rock falls in on itself.

Core samples from Latrobe Dam site. Understanding the properties of the surrounding soil is crucial for dam safety.

"Several homes are already cracking and tilting because of severe land subsidence...One home, built only three years ago, has large cracks in the master bedroom, kitchen, living room, and hall. The crack in the bedroom is an inch wide and goes across the ceiling and down one wall, exposing insulation."Fresno Bee, January 28, 1973. Page C1.

"Shallow subsidence of from 5-6 feet should be expected at the site… The subsidence will be particularly severe because in the past the area has had very little irrigation."Memorandum from Prokopovich's files, 1967 (pg.1)

Monitoring the Environment

Canal sampling is done to gauge ecosystem health and to measure organisms' impact on canal capacity.

Salt crust in irrigation ditch. Salt deposits are left by chemical fertilizers and by the salts naturally present in water. These deposits have a major effect on the water supply downstream.

Copper sampling in Lake Solano. These studies investigated the aftereffects of mining: what residues are in our water?

Processing of the Nikola P. Prokopovich Papers was generously funded by the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and administered by the Council on Library and
Information Resources (CLIR). The University of California, Davis Special
Collections was awarded a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives
grant from 2010-2012, "Uncovering California's Environmental Collections,"
in collaboration with eight additional special collections and archival
repositories throughout the state and the California Digital Library (CDL). Grant
objectives included processing of over 33 hidden collections related to the state's
environment and environmental history. The collections document an array of
important sub-topics such as irrigation, mining, forestry, agriculture, industry,
land use, activism, and research. Together they form a multifaceted picture of the
natural world and the way it was probed, altered, exploited and protected in
California over the twentieth century. Finding aids are made available through
the Online Archive of California (OAC).

Images (unless otherwise credited) are the property of the Regents of
the University of California; no part may be reproduced or used without
permission of the Department of Special Collections.